Douglas Turner Ward's Play on Whiteness

Day of Absence on America's Public Stages

DRAMATIC RIFFS ON WHITENESS

On November 15, 1965, Douglas Turner Ward's Day of Absence, a "reverse minstrel show done in white-face," debuted at the St. Marks Playhouse. The commercial success of the stage play led to a remarkable event in November 1967: the play was filmed and presented as part of the premiere episode of the Ford Foundation's "television experiment" known as the Public Broadcast Laboratory (PBL) — predecessor to today's Public Broadcasting System (PBS). The debut episode of PBL hoped to address the need for racial dialogue, and to that end the program featured several segments that focused on the issue of race, including Douglas Turner Ward's stage-to-screen presentation of Day of Absence. While Day of Absence was, thematically, an appropriate fit for the evening's program, its inclusion proved to be disastrous for PBL: 29 out of 119 stations dropped the television program before it even aired, citing Day of Absence as their reason.

This chapter uses Douglas Turner Ward's Day of Absence to examine how tropes and theatrical strategies of whiteness are used to foster explorations of African American identity in contemporary performance. By examining the early history and critical reception of the play, it considers how Ward's dramatic presentation of whiteness was originally received on the stage and the small screen, thereby indicating how artistic interrogations of whiteness were interpreted by racially diverse audience members in the 1960s. This exploration highlights a key issue: the significance of "institutional dramaturgy." In this context, institutional dramaturgy refers to the way a producing institution strategically frames and brands its work — a dynamic that inevitably affects how the meaning of a performance text is transmitted and received by potential audiences.

In using Day of Absence as a case study, this chapter not only underscores the ways institutions of theatre and television contextualize their productions, and thereby influence audience perceptions, but it also reveals how the power of these venues can ultimately drive important social concerns into our nation's consciousness. Furthermore, by analyzing the racially charged sociopolitical thrust of Ward's play, this study pays particular attention to how Day of Absence inspired metatheatrical events in the form of sociopolitical protests and expressions of communal solidarity. Considering these metaperformances, my examination highlights the lon